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The Parents of
Abraham Lincoln

An Address by
WILLIAM E. BARTON

A iithor of "The ^oiil of Abraham Lincoln/' ''The Paternity
of Abraham Lincoln/' etc.

Delivered at the grave of Thomas Lincoln, Goose Nest
Prairie, near Janesville, Illinois,

September 18, 1922.

CHARLESTON, ILLINOIS

The Charleston Daily Courier

1922

THE CELEBRATION AT I^HILOH

Shiloli Church, which adjoins the cemetery where
Thomas Lincoln and Sarah Bush Lincoln are buried, was
recently remodeled and its facilities were enlarged. A
service of rededication was held, and a memorial window
was dedicated to the memory of Thomas and Sarah Lin-
coln. Shortly after this rededication, a notable Lincoln
celebration was held, and attended by people from the
neighborhood and from several adjacent towns. A number
of people were present who had personally known Thomas
Lincoln, and many who had known his widow. The
speaker of the day was Dr. William E. Barton, who de-
livered twO' addresses, one on ^The Greatness of Abraham
Lincoln" and the other on ''The Parents of Abraham Lin-
coln." The church Avas packed to its capacity for the
morning address. This was followed by a picnic dinner,
and r-eunion of old friends. The afternoon meeting was
held out of doors, in the cemetery. Dr. Barton delivered
his address standing beside the graves of Thomas and
Sarah Lincoln.

a:

1 i:>/iKi0 5
The Parents of Abraham Lincoln

Three mighty forces go to the making of any man,
Fii'f^t is that mysterioiis element of personality wherein
every man diifers from every other man. No two men,
even though born of the same {parents and reared in the
same surroun(lin<»s, ])rove to be Avhollv similar. No two
leaves upon the tree, no two blades of grass, no two thumb-
prints of the human hand, no two brains, no two charac-
ters are precisely alike. The second of the forces whicli
make us wiiat Ave are is heredity. Every man is what he
is partly because of what his parents, his grandparents
and his remote ancestors wei-e. The third of these forces
is enviionment. Every man's life is shaped by the influ-
ence of other lives, by soil, climate, and other conditions
surrounding him. The life of Abraham Lincoln Avas Avhat
it Avas partly because of his successive environments,
partly because of his inheritance, and ])artly b(Kause of
i^ his OAvn f>ersonality. It is fitting that we should consider

^ todav something of his inheritance through his father,

■~^ Thomas Lincoln, his mother, XancA' Hanks, and the subse-

,^ (juent influence upon him of his devoted step-mother, Sarak

It) Bush Johnson, the second Avife of Thomas Lincoln,

-ii It is surprising that so little reliable Avork has been

^. done in this field. On the death of Abraham Lincoln no

^^ member of the Lincoln family Avas present at his funeral

save his AvidoAV, Mary Todd Lincoln, and her twO' surviving
sons, Robert, and Thomas. Although most of the Todds
Avere Confederates, there Avere Todd relatives at the fu-
neral, but no Lincoln. There has been but little oppor-
tunity to learn to Avliat extent Abraham Lincoln Avas a
Lincoln. His own contact Avith the Lincoln family Avas
exceedingly meager.

This Ave knoAv, however, that Abraham Lincoln was
thoroughly a Lincoln, ^ye know enough of the Lincoln
family traits to assure ourseh^es that hoAvever great the
contrast betAveen him and either of his parents, he had an
important heritage from both. AYhile Thomas Lincoln
never could have been as great a nmn as his son, and Avhile
Nancy Hanks never contemplated the possibility of herself
becoining a notable Avoman, each of these tAvo gaA'e some-
thing important to the making of Lincoln. The picture
of Nancy Hanks, Avhich has come down to us, is vague in
its outline and elusive in its definition. But Lincoln him-
self said of his mother that she was a woman of strong

3

mind and character and that from her he inher-ited his
power of analysis and his logical mind. Thomas Lincoln
died before his son became famous, and he was held in no
very high regai-d by Lincoln's earlier biographers ; but in
proportion as we come to know the Lincolns, and to be
able to form some judgment of the character of Thomas
Lincoln, we find him to have been indispensable in the
heredity of his great son.

No one of us can spare any one of his ancestors. There
is no way in which we can short-circuit the line of descent
so as to cuti out the obscurest and least interesting of them..
Each one of them, male and female, is indispensable in liis
or her own generation ; and had the place of any one man
or any one woman among them been taken by any other
man or woman in that generation, we should not be what
now we are.

We have tO' reckon with Abraham Lincoln as he was ;
and it is in some respects a minor (question how he came
to be what he was ; but this we know, that his personality
was a strange compound of diverse elements, some of them
inhented from his paternal and some from his maternal
lines, and that he needed all of them to be Abraham Lin-
coln.

So much of error has been printed as truth, it may be
well to give a few dates and other biographical data.

First of all, the dates given on the tombstone of
Thomas Lincoln, I am confident, are correct, and not those
furnished in some of the biographies. He was born in
Rockingham County, Virginia, January 7, 1778, and he
died Januai-y 15, 1851. He was the youngest of three sons,
and next to the youngest of five children of Abraham and
Bathsheba Lincoln. .His father was not twice married;
the five children were all children of one mother, who re-
moved to Kentucky with her husband in 1782, and long
survived him. Abraham Lincoln the elder was killed by
Indians in May, 1780, and not in 1784, as is usually stated.
Thomas Lincoln learned the carpenter's trade. He was
probably not a very skilled carpenter, but he was compe-
tent to do the kind of work which the frontier required.

Nancy Hanks, first wife of Thomas Lincoln, and
mother of the President, was born in Virginia in 1783;
lemoved mtli her family to Kentucky in early childhood ;
w^as married to Thomas Lincoln by Rev. Jesse Head on
Beech Fork, in Washington Oounty, on June 12, 1806.
With her husband and children she removed to Indiana
in 1816, and she died October 5, 1818.

4

Sarah or Sally Bush, second wife of Thomas Lincoln,
lived in p]lizabethto\vn, Kentucky, and nianicd, first,
Daniel Johnston, by wlioni she had three clnldren, John
D., Sarah and Matihhi. Atter the (U^ath of licr first liiis-
band, she married Thomas Lincoln I)ecend)ei- 2, LSID. She
was a good mother, both to hei- own chihlr(Mi and to tlie
two children of Thomas Lincoln, Sarah and Abraham.
She died Apiil 10, lS()i), and is buried here b(^side licr lius-
band. Her infiuence upon the life of Abraham Lincoln
was wholly iiood. He held her in honor, and she cherislied
his memory with a beautiful and truly motheily affection.

Standin<> here today by the grave of Thomas Lincoln,
and that of his second Avife, Sally Bush, the second mother
of Abraham Lincoln, we have to remind ourselves that
there is much need of revision of popular knowledge, or
what passes for knowledge, concerning Lincoln's parents.
His step-mother suivived him, and lived to be interviewed
by the earlier biographers. She was able tO' bear her testi-
mony that Abraham was always a good boy and never
spoke to her a cross word, and that she loved him as her
own sou. But Thomas and Nancy Lincoln died long before
Abraham, and there is nuich error commonly accepted as
truth in the literatuic concerning both of them.

It is often allegx^d that the name of Thomas Lincoln
was not Lincoln but Linkhorn. Various authors have de-
clared that this branch o-f the family nevei- wrote the name
as Lincoln until Abraham Lincoln himself obtained suffi-
cient education to settle the spelling. As recent a wi'iter
as Norman Hapgood says of Thomas Lincoln, or Linkhorn,
"His name was under the circumstances unstable, but in
Indiana it showed a general drift toward Lickern, away
from the favorite Kentucky form of Linkhorn, settling its
present spelling many years later in Illinois."' Mr. Hap-
good is wrong in this and in much besides. In the back-
w^oods, not only the name of Lincoln but most other names
were mispronounced and misspelled, but I have not found
one single instance of its being misspelled by a member of
the family. Thoujas Lincoln and Thomas Lincoln's father
Abraham and Thomas Lincoln's uncle Thomas, for whom
he was named, and his grandfathei- and his great-grand-
father all signed their names Lincoln.

It is often alleged and commonly believe<l that
Thomas Lincoln was taught to read and write by his first
wife, Nancv Hanks. On the contrarv, he signed his name
before he was mari-ied. We have reason to believe that
Nancv Hanks did write, but in the onlv document that has

5

been discoyered executed by these two, Thomas Lincoln
signed his name and ]S"ancy made her mark. It is tme that
Thomas Lincoln's education was very meager. As his
famous son said of him, he Avas able ''bunglingly to write
his own name" and that was all. But that was something
of a distinction in a time when so many men in contem-
porary life and with like advantages signed their names
with a cross.

It is often alleged that Thomas Lincoln was cheated
out of his inheritance by his two older brothers, Mordecai
and Josiah, Mordecai taking the whole property by right
of primogenituie and distributing a minor portion to
Josiah by leaving Thomas entirely unprovided for. On the
contrary, it appears that Mordecai as heir-at-law of his
father represented honorably the interests of the whole
family. Soon after Thomas Lincoln became of age he was
able to buy an improved farm and to pay for it in cash.
The money presumably had come to him through the set-
tlement of his father's estate.

Very nearly everything that has been written about
Thomas Lincoln's three farms in Kentucky is wrong. The
historians and biographers, even the best of them, have
the three hopelessly mixed up, and hardly anything that
they tell about them is authentic.

It is commonly asserted that Thomas Lincoln and his
first wife, Nancy Hanks, were first cousins, she being the
daughter of Joseph and Nancy Shipley Hanks, and he the
son of Abraham and Mary Shipley Lincoln, and that
Nancy was brought up by a thiid of the five Shipley sis-
ters, her dear Aunt Lucy, wife of Richard Berry. Thomas
Lincoln and Nancy Hanks were not cousins; we might
even go the Hibernian length of saying that ''neither of
them were cousins." Her mother was not Nancy Shipley
and his mother was not Mary Shipley, and her Aunt Lucy
was not. Aunt Lucy, but was named Rachel and there was
no proof that she was Nancy's aunt.

It is commonly asserted that Thomas Lincoln was
virtually a pauper, and pathetic stories are told of the ex-
treme poverty of himself and Avife at. the time of the birth
of Abraham. The Lincoln family w^as poor, cA^en as pov-
erty is judged in the backAvoods ; but there exist records of
certain purchases made by Thomas Lincoln of articles for
the home, showing that even in those primitive days in the
backwoods of Kentucky the discomfort was not quite so
great nor the poA^erty so wretched as has been described.

Authors have seemed to feel the necessity of going to

C

one 01- two extremes in their description of the early life
of Lincoln. Eitlier they i(Unilize it, so that there is no real
poverty, or they exaj»jierate conditions of s(inalor to ntter
Av retch edn ess. Neither is quite true.

It is often afifirnu'd tliat Tlioinas Lincoln owned no
live stock, and liad to boi low horses Avith Avhich to nialvc
his niiiiration from Kentucky. On the contrary, Thomas
Lincoln owned a horse before he Avas of a<»e, and during
his married life, as slioAvn by authentic and contemporai*y
lists, he ahvays liad at least one horse and commonly moie
than one. There is evidence that he was something of a
hoi'se-brecHler. At one tinu^ he owned a stallion and sev-
eral mares. He also oAvned cattle.

It is often affii-med that Th(Hnas Lincoln Avas a kind
of religious vagrant, having no' settled religious life but
drifting in a derelict Avay into one sect after another and
being brought into church membership through the influ-
ence of his second Avife. On the contrary, Thomas Lincoln
Avas a member of the church in Kentucky, where Nancy
Hanks also api)eai"s to have been a member, and AAdien he
joined the church in Indiana Avith his second Avife, Sarah
Kush Lincoln, he joined by letter and she by experience.
He was a church member before she was. He was an offi-
cial member of the churcli, sometimes acting as moderator,
sometimes as referee in matters of arbitration between
church membei's, sometimes as delegate to other churches.

Thomas Lincoln Avas an easy-going man, Avithout am-
bition, and he cannot be called industrious. But he was
friendly, honest, neighborly, and, judged by the standards
of his day, temperate. He avou the hearts of two good
women. The first of these Avas Nancy Hanks, a chaste
young Avoman, Avho bequeathed to her son fine qualities of
character, temperament, dis])osition and poAver of mental
gi-asp ; Avhile he be(|neathed a genial disposition, sound
good sense, a love of story-telling, and those companion-
able (]ualities Avhich meant sO' much to the life of Abraham
Lincoln. The other Avas Sarah Bush Lincoln, who made
Thomas a loving and faithful Avife and Abraham a devoted
mother. In her younger yeais she was alert, active, indus-
trious and all her life she Avas a tiiie and sincere Chris-
tian Avoman. ]Much i)ity has been Avasted upon her for hav-
ing married Thomas Lincoln. There is no evidence that
she felt the need of such pity; nor is it any libel upon her
first husband to say that her second marriage brought her
quite as nnich happiness as the first.

Of the vast quantities of literature that have been pro-

7

(liiced concerning- Thomas Lincoln and his two niariiages,
not quite all is false, but more than half of it is in great
n^ed of re^ision, and some is utter trash. The parents -of
Lincoln were undistinguished, but they were godfl people,
and neither Lincoln nor we have any occasion to be
ashamed of them. There is of course if marked contrast
between their obscurity and his immortal fame, but except
for them we should never have had him. They helped to
make him the man he was.

We hold in lasting honor the memory of Abraham
Lincoln. We are in no danger of honoring him more
liighlv than he deserves. He is Avorthv of all our devotion.
But just now we are remembering: these humble folk, his
parents, his father, his mother and his step-mother. They
were a part of the common stuff of American life in that
period of movement and of new settlement, with nothing
to distinguish them above their neighbors, save this, only,
that from their home w^ent forth into the world a mighty
leader of mankind. We could not have expected that any
such son as Abraham Lincoln should have gone forth from
their cabin, but Ave have no reason to be sui'prised that
such was the case. In their veins flowed good, sturdy,
clean American blood. They were honest, virtuous, sober
people. They were siiicere and religious. AVith little edu-
cation, they had good sense and good native ability. They
contributed the qualities which were essential to the
heredity and early environment of the man who was to
save this nation and to make it forever free. Let us honor
today the honest, sturdy pioneers of whom they were fair
average examples. Let us be glad that from homes as
humble as theirs and descended from families as little
known to fame as theirs had been, so great a man could
go forth. For this is one chief hope of American life, that
our leaders are to be made out of the stuff of our common
manhood. From fathers and mothers as simple and un-
pretentious as Thomas Lincoln and Kancy Hanks, from
homes as poor as that of Thomas Lincoln and Sally Bush,
are to go forth men of learning and power. These are in
large measure the hope of America, and increasingly are
they to be the hope of the Avorld.

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